Dance of Emotions - Part -2: The Journey continues!

My fear says this post is long, don't read,

Love says, read, this post it can make you strong!

My EGO befriends Fear,
My becoming unconditional manifests Love.

Being vulnerable I seek,
Wanting answers shuts the door to me receiving.

When I am dependent, I am ruled by Fear.
When I am In-dependent, I am Love.

Surviving is Fear, Thriving is Love.

Preserving repetitive routines strengthens my fear,
Living in Randomness blossoms my Love.

When I procrastinate, I prolong the Fear,
When I decide, I decorate Love.

When I am ruled by people, I protect my Fear,
When I choose the freedom to live, I demonstrate my Love.

My EGO based expectations fuel my fears,
My willingness to accept ignites Love.

I call for crutches in Fear,
I learn to fly in Love.

My thought of separation is victory for Fear,
My feel for unity is celebration for Love.

My fear repels relationships,
My Love attracts the 'ONE'.

Being caged is by nature Fear,
Spreading my wings and willing to fly is by birth Love.

My Fear pushes me to rule,
My Love liberates to bond!

The moment I give excuses, I protect my Fears,
My willingness to experiment is a proclamation of my love.

My Fears block my old energy,
Love allows my divine energy to flow!

Fear highlights others deficiencies,
My Love supports everyone's strength.

When I withhold, I expand my Fear,
When I announce, I attract Love.

My Fears are minute compared to,
My Love, which is vast.

Fear follows the finite,
Love leads you to the infinite.

My Fears force my point of view,
My Love embraces other's view point.

Fear says, my will,
Love is free-will.

My fears define my 'rights' and 'wrongs'
My Love creates 'what works'

Fear magnifies melodrama,
Love crystallises the Story.

My fear is based on my knowledge,
My Love builds on wisdom!.

My EGO driven Fears are my liabilities,
My Love is an asset.

Fear withdraws,
Love deposits.

My Fears confirms to norm,
My Love makes me non-confirming to norm.

My Fears restrict my choices,
There is no choice but to Love.

My Fear chokes my Life,
My Love celebrates Living!

Divine Grace.....My 5 days of Inquiry!

When you deep dive within and discover: Don't deny

When you are denied your need to discover: Don't Suppress

Denial and Suppression are giving-in,
Giving-in is Separation.
Separation has its roots entrenched in Fear

Fear from your 'self' and fear from the 'divine self'

Fear suffocates the true spirit,
Causes dis-ease in the mind,
That trickles down as disease of the body.

Call forth your true need with gay-abandon,
Attract the power of eternal union,
Let the Universe work for your co-creation.

You are far from competition to receive Love,
You are Love, Divine Love.

There are no names and no labels,
Only your freedom of choice to express

The Personal ROI

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EGO and Spirit!

Right and Wrong!

Of Silence and Listening...

On Saturday evening we witnessed a magnificent spectacle in the sky: the lunar eclipse. What amazed me that evening was the absolute silence that prevailed all around, even the silence of nature. The complete silence that lasted the duration of the eclipse was indeed an amazing experience. I felt that we experience the glory and beauty of celestial grandeur only in moments of complete silence.

Today, if you look around you find that all we have around us is noise. It’s noisy in the streets, it’s noisy in the restaurants, it’s noisy on the television, it’s noisy everywhere. Even schools today teach the young to read, write and recite, but never to listen — not only to listen externally but also internally. We are in times when, even while working, walking, jogging or simply sitting, we have a constant companion called noise.

In fact we have reached a stage where silence is scary and hence there’s a need for noise as a constant companion.

When we are silent, the mind starts talking to us and it can be extremely difficult to listen to our own mind.

Ask yourself this question: “Will I be my best friend?”. The answer in all probability will be “no!” That is because we are constantly self-critical.

In order to escape this self-critical person in us we find various ways not to listen to the mind.

While the self-critique in us can make us quite uncomfortable, it is the storehouse of information. It can give us an insight into how we are currently thinking and feeling.

When we become aware of our thoughts and feelings, we can go about understanding and healing the inner critique. And one of the ways we can understand and heal the inner critique is by remaining silent, by listening and experiencing everything around us, accepting the views of others, listening to the thoughts of others.

We find difficulty in following it, because as soon as we are subjected to any feedback, our defense mechanisms, built up unconsciously since childhood, spring to our apparent rescue.

When we become defenseless and operate through silence we discover a new self, a self that is happy and in sync with its surroundings. In the self that has divinity within we can find the glory and beauty of celestial grandeur.

As Rachel Naomi Remen has said: “The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. “Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention.

“A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words”.

Head and Heart!

Noise and Voice

Happiness!

ENABLING DIVINE EMOTIONS AND EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE TO DRIVE THE HAPPINESS QUOTIENT

Looking around us everyday, we get a sense of the emotional energy pervading all around of Fear, Anger, hostility, guilt, shame and depression, which Deepak Chopra calls as Diabolical Emotions.

Spin it around and we can look at the divine emotions of Love, Joy, Compassion, and Equanimity according to him.

Connecting the dots of the divine emotions to emotional intelligence, I have put forth my views how to arrive at the Happiness quotient that we all are seekers off.

Recent research in the field of EI calls happiness as an indicator of emotional health and well-being and the four factors of Happiness as per EQ-I 2.0, are Self Regard, Optimism, Interpersonal Relationships and Self actualization.

As an individual with high Self Regard, I respect myself as well as accept the strengths and limitations while remaining satisfied and self-secure. When we can do this to ourselves and can apply a similar structure to all around us, we become unconditional, which is the primary ingredient of the divine emotion called Love for me.

The second aspect of optimism where I see hope, the glass as half-full, can get energized by setbacks and obstacles and fuelled to overcome challenges in life, I express the second divine emotion of Joy showcasing itself in all its glory.

Wikipedia defines Compassion as that emotion that one feels in response to the sufferings of the others that motivates a desire to help, which sits exceedingly well for me with the Emotional Intelligence element of Inter-Personal Relationships where we look out not only for new relationships but also take care of the ones we already have, we have the courage to ask and give help and have mutually enriching exchanges in professional as well as personal lives.

Self-Actualization in the business world means finding the purpose and enjoying what you do while performing at the optimal level. When I operate from that space I can help others to self-actualize too because there is this inner stillness of peace and confidence, that the universe is conspiring for our greater purpose, which the divine emotion of Equanimity is all about.

When I am at peace, the other three divine emotions of Love, Joy and Compassion flow effortlessly and express themselves in their true glory.

To the emotional intelligence angle of measuring happiness, if divine emotions are added, I propose that I am an individual with a high happiness quotient.

Conversely, apply the divine emotions first in day-to-day life and automatically increase your emotional intelligence as well as your happiness quotient.  

Psychology takes time to express what spirituality already possesses!

Enjoy and In-Joy

Healing and Pain

Using Emotional Energy to Inspire

In the boardroom at 3M headquarters in the fourth quarter 1995 after putting a $650 million worth magnetic-storage business, the benefits director drew an iceberg. Inside the tip, the part exposed above the water, he wrote absenteeism, medical expenses, technology, facilities, tech training, quality control and benchmarking. Below the waterline – on the submerged 90 percent of the iceberg – he wrote tension, energy, stress, personal wellness and lifestyle, interpersonal skills and creativity. Below this he wrote a series of question marks.

It is that time of the year in companies and maybe some companies the time has come and gone, when we do the annual performance appraisals of employees and I dare say the most traumatic part of their work year. “Why is this so?”

I am sure that there has been enough of research and debate around the topic and the 3M instances just influenced me to put in my two bits to the plethora of information that is already available. I am approaching the topic from the Emotional Intelligence angle.

In my personal view the 10% above the water is what I would like to call as the ‘Drama’ that which is visible to the external environment and is an indicator of the companies well being. The 90% below the water line is what I call the ‘Story’, which is hidden and very often not given its ‘due importance’. Do pay attention that I have said due importance.

In the current context the Drama is priority forgetting the Story which leaves the employee often frustrated because all the challenges that he is facing stems from the 90% and a sustained focus is lacking here.

Any attention to the 90% paid is more through a ‘spray and pray’ form of skill based training whose effects have a highly limited period of retention let alone implementation.

We need to understand that the pain points mentioned in the 90% all have an emotional component attached to it and when we try and deal with it as a skill gap, the results are what they are, dismal.

Using Emotional Intelligence as a means to address the emotional component of employee challenges would lead to changes that are more effective and lasting. We need to understand that any situation that we deal with in our everyday interaction has an underlying emotional element attached to it, the more we deny it the stronger it gets.

The said emotion has a corresponding energy woven to it that can be used for the good of both the individual good as well as for the collective good.

New age Emotional Intelligence is defined as, “a set of emotional and social skills that influence the way we perceive and express ourselves, develop and maintain social relationships, cope with challenges, and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way.”

When these emotional and social skills are channelized the resultant energy can result in brek-through performances both at an individaul as well as at a organizational level.

Going forward as a developmental tool for this year, look at what ‘Emotional Energy’ can do to build emotional engagement for and individual both personally and professionally.

Remember that the Story supports the drama and not the other way round!

References: Executive EQ: Robert K. Cooper and Ayman Sawar, EQi 2.0 – Multi-Health Systems

Emotionally Intelligent Living.

Our Physical personality consists of the Perceiver and the actor. Our forms of perception, driven by the sense organs of Taste, Touch, Smell, Hear and See, help us understand the physical world. The actor executes the actions based on our perception. The Emotional personality has the Feeler in us, which involves handling our emotions, and the discriminatory personality has the Thinker in us that defines intellect, which further branches into the gross and the subtle. The gross is involved in worldly boundaries and worldly thoughts and the subtle is the contemplator in which lies the spiritual personality. We now live in the age of speed and instant gratification; we have everything instant starting from noodles, to messaging. The media today constantly exposes our minds on the need or speed. We have 15-second advertisements showing achievements, which might take a lifetime, and giving us a false sense of instant possibility. This has driven focus from what is fundamentally important to what is urgently important thereby causing anxiety when one discovers things do not work the way they want it to and it surely doesn’t work in 15 seconds. We begin to live on expectations from our actions, which causes internal stress, rather than on accepting the results of our actions. When the mind is racing with thoughts of expectations and encounters roadblocks anxiety increases and when anxiety increases it leads to stress. Stress is therefore the speed of the mind. To reduce stress we need to decrease the speed of the mind. This is the yogic definition of stress. So, the percolation of stress starts in the mind which affects our breathing (observe your breath in moments of anger or fear), which affects the way, we look (body language in times of anger and fear) and finally affects the individual organs leading to various ailments. When our intellect is inattentive due to external stressors the mind goes wandering, making the senses run helter skelter which causes the body to be under constant pressure and finally break. Therefore to control the speed of the mind we need to first control our intellect which means focusing on our contemplative intellect and seek to understand the greater purpose of our journey on this planet which is fundamentally important rather than get carried away by our gross intellect making us seek temporary accomplishments which are short lived and thereby carry the message of being urgently important to do. Being Emotionally Intelligent, for a start, helps focus on the contemplative you and start the journey of discovery within.

Defence Mechanisms

The origin of defence mechanisms

By Balakrishna Jayasimha



When anxieties due to prevailing insecurities become too overwhelming, it is then the place of the ego to employ defence mechanisms to protect the individual. Feelings of guilt, embarrassment and shame often accompany the feeling of anxiety.

Lately, as my research in behavioural sciences moves me into the thesis stage, I have been asked as to who my subjects are going to be as a part of sampling. Quite a few have jokingly even asked who would be my ‘specimens’.
Upon sheer reflection, I realised how we look for external ‘specimens’ for our own internal insecurities. The best ‘specimen’ is the self and reflecting on the self can help bring to the surface these insecurities, so that the process of healing begins.
Unfortunately, we look at others as ‘specimens’ when the true ‘specimen’ lies within. This is because as a part of the review of literature, I came across how our “defence mechanisms” play an important role in looking to the external to cover for our insecurities rather than to look within.
“Defence mechanisms” are unconscious resources used by the ego to reduce anxiety and for that reason; they are more accurately referred to as the ego defence mechanisms. When anxieties due to prevailing insecurities become too overwhelming, it is then the place of the ego to employ defence mechanisms to protect the individual. Feelings of guilt, embarrassment and shame often accompany the feeling of anxiety.
While there are many types of defence mechanisms, three have been listed that are prevalent and regularly employed by oneself.
The first one is ‘denial’; this is an ego defence mechanism that operates unconsciously, to resolve emotional conflict, and to reduce the anxiety by refusing to perceive the more unpleasant aspects of external reality. The second one is ‘projecting’; attributing to others or to the external environment, one’s own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts, feelings and emotions, is projection, this reduces anxiety in a way that it allows the expression of the impulse or desire without letting the ego recognise it. The third is ‘rationalisation’; this is the process of constructing a logical justification for a decision which may have gone wrong. We may rationalise anything and everything which has not gone according to our expectation.
Do not make an assessment of every situation, appreciate the essence in that situation, when we assess it increases anxiety. Listening without assessing we appreciate what is said, it is also a way, where the ego loses its place in day to day interactions.

Follow your Intuition

Article in the Deccan Herald dated 11th August, 2006.
Panorama; Oasis.

Follow your intuition


To develop intuition, we need to dig inside us rather than look outside for rationalisation. If the driving force of intelligence in the 20th century has been the head, in the dawning of the 21st century it will be the heart. The emphasis on the intellect for defining success of an individual by the modern world is out of touch with the heart-level engine or intuition today.

Following your intuition would mean following your heart, listening to your gut feeling. There might have been several times in our lives when we have felt a certain way about a certain event, but have not expressed it, and later found out that what we felt actually happened. We simply did not have the courage to express what we felt when we felt it.

Following the heart also means following the divinity within, it is listening to the divine voice within; it is listening to your feelings. When we listen to the voice within we recognise the same voice in others.


The rational thinking in us, the intellect has taken us far away from the magical world of our gut ‘feel’ and dismissed it as coincidental thoughts. The most common example being when we think of a person whom we have not met in a while and at that very moment that person either calls or arrives at our doorstep, we say “what a coincidence"! There is a thin line which separates our thoughts from intuition.

Intuition has, other than thoughts a bodily response, we experience a tingling sensation when such thoughts arise. We need to observe our bodily response when a thought arises to distinguish it as thought from intuition. Thus, to develop the intuitive faculty in us we need to go within rather than look for rationalisation from the outside. Once we develop our intuitive abilities, we also are able to recognise the inner feelings in most others – this way we understand their feelings and emotions. We often say “I understand” without actually doing so. All this requires a process of un-learning and learning again. A student asked the master, “Lead me to change master, I want to become like you”. The master looked at the pupil, and took a jar containing water lying next to him and started to pour the water into a glass which was three fourths full. The glass filled up and water started flowing out, but the master continued pouring.

The pupil said, "What are you up to master? The water is spilling out! To which the master replied, "Son, for you to accept something new, you first need to pour out all that is old!

FUNDAMENTALLY IMPORTANT LIVING.

Our Physical personality consists of the Perceiver and the actor. Our forms of perception, driven by the sense organs of Taste, Touch, Smell, Hear and See, help us understand the physical world. The actor executes the actions based on our perception.

The Emotional personality has the Feeler in us which involves handling our emotions, and the discriminatory personality has the Thinker in us that defines intellect which further branches into the gross and the subtle. The gross is involved in worldly boundaries and worldly thoughts and the subtle is the contemplator in which lies the spiritual personality.

We now live in the age of speed and instant gratification; we have everything instant starting from noodles, to messaging.

The media today constantly exposes our minds to speed. We have 15 second advertisements showing achievements which might take a lifetime and giving us a false sense of instant possibility. This has driven focus from what is fundamentally important to what is urgently important thereby causing anxiety when one discovers things do not work the way they want it to and it surely doesn’t work in 15 seconds. We begin to live on expectations from our actions which causes internal stress rather than on accepting the results of our actions.

When the mind is racing with thoughts of expectations and encounters roadblocks anxiety increases and when anxiety increases it leads to stress. Stress is therefore the speed of the mind. To reduce stress we need to decrease the speed of the mind. This is the yogic definition of stress.

So, the percolation of stress starts in the mind which affects our breathing (observe your breath in moments of anger or fear) which affects the way we look (body language in times of anger and fear) and finally affects the individual organs leading to various ailments.

When our intellect is inattentive due to external stressors the mind goes wandering, making the senses run helter skelter which causes the body to be under constant pressure and finally break.

Therefore to control the speed of the mind we need to first control our intellect which means focusing on our contemplative intellect and seek to understand the greater purpose of our journey on this planet which is fundamentally important rather than get carried away by our gross intellect making us seek temporary accomplishments which are short lived and thereby carry the message of being urgently important to do.

For a start, to reduce the speed of the mind, focus on the contemplative you and start the journey of discovery within.